To Benjamin Franklin from Ezra Stiles, 28 September 1770
From Ezra Stiles
ALS: Yale University Library
Newport Sept. 28. 1770
Dear Sir
Yesterdy I received your Favor of 16 May ult with Relandi Analecta Rabbinica you was so obliging as to send me.5 For which please to accept my Thanks. One of the Tracts I wanted is contained in Relandi Hist. Hebraea.6 I am sorry to have given you so much Trouble. I could wish for an Answer from Mr. Dow——as I have a very great Thirst after Oriental Antiquities.7 With the greatest Respect, I am Dear Sir Your most obliged Friend and very humble Servant
Ezra Stiles
Dr Benja Franklin R.S.S. London
5. See above, XVI, 271.
6. Adriaan Reland, Antiquitates Sacræ Veterum Hebræorum (Utrecht, 1708).
7. Alexander Dow (d. 1779) was an officer in the army of the East India Company, and a dramatist and orientalist by avocation. While on leave in England in 1768 he had published two translations from the Persian, one of tales and the other of a history of Hindustan. DNB. Stiles had read a review of the history, and had written Dow in December, 1769, to inquire about early Hindu writings and religion. His questions were numerous and explicit; he clearly had no more hesitation about troubling a stranger than about troubling BF. See Abiel Holmes, The Life of Ezra Stiles … (Boston, 1798), pp. 134–6.